Artistic Bayou Ants

  It seems as if I will never get rid of all the hurricane debris in the yard.  It has been almost a year since Hurricane Zeta hit and I still have hundreds of boards stacked in piles about the place and large piles of downed limbs.  The limbs were kept to be cut as firewood but since winter was not a terribly cold time, the limbs sat.  I try to "organize" things in neater piles and keep the weeds from getting out of hand.  Now, there are two storms eyeing the Gulf...Fred and Grace.  Whether these amount to much and whether they make landfall here is yet to be known.  All I can think about is...more debris...more work.

  While out working, I came across an oddity (at least, odd for me).  All sorts of ants are busy making their nests since the weather has turned drier.  I see many mounds but this one struck me as unusual.  The ants were bringing out sand particles and dirt particles from their tunnel.  That is not odd but the fact that the remnants were divided directly in half across the mound was.  Creamy white sand was on one side and darker, softer dirt was on the other.  The mound was divided with an almost perfect line.  Although Son gave a very logical explanation for this "phenomenon", I am not easily convinced.  In my mind, it was magical!  I had come across some very artistic ants or some very OCD ants.  The idea of the ants separating the grains according to texture and moisture content was far too practical.  Bayou ants are too creative to do anything so boring.  Maybe I should get as creative with the debris piles!